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Rabat – Morocco has ranked 24th in Global Finance’s “World’s Safest Countries 2021” list, outperforming other North African countries such as Algeria, which ranked 61st, and Tunisia, 93rd.
The news outlet ranks the world’s safest countries based on three “fundamental factors,” namely, war and peace, personal security, and natural disaster risk — which includes various problems that arose with the emergence of COVID-19. All data was taken from 2020, based on reports from 2021.
Within the parameters considered by the organization, Morocco scored an 8.05 on the Global Finance Safety Index Score, where a lower value indicates higher safety. The top three countries on the list are Iceland, which is the highest ranking country with a score of 3.97, United Arab Emirates in second place with a score of 4.2, and Qatar in third place with a score of 4.56.Among
other high scoring Arab countries are Bahrain, ranking 12th with a score of 6.81, Kuwait, which scored 7.65 and ranked 18th, and Saudi Arabia, ranked 19th with a score of 7.69.
Read also: Morocco Leads Maghreb in Economy, Fight Against Climate Change
Morocco’s eastern neighbor, Algeria, ranks 61st with a score of 9.8847, while Tunisia ranked 93rd with a score of 11.31. Morocco’s southern neighbor, Mauritania, just trails behind Algeria, ranking 64th with a score of 9.97.
The “global pandemic upended many of the usual rankings and dynamics between developed and developing countries,” as reflected in the fall in rankings of several “developed European countries,” Global Finance noted.
While countries such as Portugal, Spain and Belgium usually rank in the top 20, this year they’ve ended up in 29th, 41st, and 66th, respectively. The ranking placed a significant weight on COVID-related deaths, reflecting poorly on the performance of many Western countries like the US, which ranked 71st.
For the publication, “deaths per capita is a direct measure of how well or poorly a given country responded to the spread of Covid-19.” Within this framework, a given country’s performance also reflects on the state of its healthcare infrastructure, governmental abilities, political leadership and “culture in face of a major, unexpected crisis.”
